Sue Butler
Selling Ice Cream
The old man at the Military Museum
watches children playing,
getting rust on their clothes,
making horses of tank barrels aimed at the road
down which he hurries each evening.
On the trolley-bus his medals secure him a seat
and his wife knows his footstep coming upstairs.
She gets out bowls and spoons.
Even half-thawed the cold blocks hurt his gums,
remind him of trenches filled with snow,
bodies frozen in no-man’s-land,
the slow rotting of his toes.
His wife’s favourite is strawberry.
It stains her lips Bette Davis vermilion,
gives her the courage to cross the landing,
borrow an egg and a glass of white flour,
bake dough, without sugar,
in an ungreased cake-tin,
wedge the window open, singing loudly
like someone who is warm.
Page(s) 23
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The